UKTI Mega Mission to Bulgaria and Romania

The four-day tour offers the opportunity to find out more and to meet potential business partners in both countries, in nuclear, oil & gas, mass transport, water and environmental industries.

The energy sector in Bulgaria and Romania is modernising rapidly, creating major opportunities for British companies which are both broad (across every subsector of the energy sector, but particularly in nuclear energy and oil & gas) and deep (with major investment projects planned in every country).

Romania has two operational Candu 6 reactors in Cernavoda, and intends to build two similar reactors on the same site, a project worth £5.5 billion over the next 6-7 years. A separate project to extend the life of one of the existing reactors will begin in 2018 and will require a further £1.8 billion to be spent on storage for the radioactive waste generated, work on which will start next year.

Bulgaria has operated a nuclear power plant at Kozloduy on the Danube for over 30 years. Nearly £400 million in decommissioning work is currently being tendered on reactors 1 to 4, including a waste disposal facility, and lifetime extension work on reactors 5 and 6 (worth £250-300 million) will be tendered later this year.

Elsewhere in the region, Poland envisages 6,000MWe of nuclear power to come online by 2035 from two multi-unit plants, the first of which will be operational by 2025. In Hungary, the Paks nuclear power plant will be expanded with two new reactors.